How Humans Feel About Touching Robots' 'Intimate Areas'

A study participant and the Nao robot used in the study. (Credit: Jamy Li/Stanford) Touching a robot's "intimate areas" can be arousing, researchers from Stanford say. Jamy Li, a doctoral student at Stanford University asked 10 people to follow a robot's commands as it asked them to touch 13 different parts of its body, including its hand, ear and buttocks. Li found that participants showed definite signs of arousal when asked to touch "areas of low accessibility" — a scientific way of saying "butt." Scientists have examined the ways we appraise a robot's appearance and the words it uses, but Li wanted to examine an under appreciated facet of robot-human interactions: touch.